Dulera, Asmanex, Singulair, Fluticasone, Albuterol...somehow, for some reason, my lungs over the past few years went from having a minor issue with exercise induced asthma, to being... well... damaged goods. I used to be able to knock off Rainier and if I forgot my inhaler...no big deal. Nowadays, I feel like I'm carrying a small pharmacy in my first-aid kit. After experiencing some rather bad altitude sickness for the first time ever in Nepal this fall, I really wasn't sure what a Rainier climb was going to feel like.
I took a shot at the Fuhrer Finger route in March...conditions were beyond perfect, but I was feeling maxed out trying to keep up... so one of the climbers who wasn't feeling so hot and I skied down a couple hours short of the summit.
Since then, we've had plenty of nice weekends to play in the Cascades and Becky and I have skied a lot but conditions never seemed quite good enough for another Rainier attempt, at least when I had the free time. Its been a monkey on my back to take another shot at it.
This weekend the upcoming heat wave meant the freezing level would be above the top of Rainier, but the forecasted 50mph wind on the summit meant there probably wasn't going to be soft snow up high. Ross was game for taking a shot at it, so Saturday morning we headed on down to Rainier. We'd changed our previous climbing reservation a couple weeks back to the 29th and 30th so no problemo getting a camping permit at Camp Schurman for the night.
Saturday we put-putted our way up the trail into Glacier Basin, up the Inter Glacier, and over onto the Emmons Glacier. Spent the rest of the afternoon melting snow, re-hydrating, and resting our legs. There were maybe four parties of skiers and a dozen or so groups of climbers...the climbers would all be leaving around midnight, the skiers anywhere between 4am and 6am to catch softer snow in the afternoon up high.
Sunday morning dawned warm, calm, and clear...we loaded our packs, I took my assorted asthma meds and away we went. A slow and steady grind over the next 6 hours up a never-ending bootpack with the occasional crevasse to step over and we were nearing the top. We'd stop from time to time to let a descending party of climbers scoot by on the cattle path, and we'd grab some Gu packets and water. The wind continued to get worse and as we climbed it went from t-shirt weather, to windbreakers, hats, then winter gloves and goretex.
I really wasn't sure about skiing the snow that we were passing by...the Emmons route isn't steep at all, but the wind was keeping things quite firm. About a thousand feet below the summit we saw the first group of skiers and snowboarders descending. The lead skier was going surprisingly fast given the conditions and just below us he crashed and started sliding. We later found out that both his bindings failed...the toe pieces ripped from his skis and left his skis without runaway leahes...which explains why his boards just kept skittering downhill and dropped into a crevasse below. He came to a stop...stood up, and began putting on his crampons and getting his ice axe out. His partners were transitioning from their skis and boards to crampons as we passed by...hopefully they were able to retrieve the skis.
As we neared the top, we ran into another group of skiers we'd met at Schurman the day before...they were skiing how I like to ski...nice and in control. Ross gave them a bit of advice about swinging out onto the Winthrop as he'd done last year to avoid the steepest bit of the upper Emmons where we'd seen that fellow take a spill.
Down jackets on and a quick scamper up to the crater rim and we'd made it! I was ready to get out of there.. my lungs were not happy with the thin air, but the Diamox I'd taken earlier kept the mountain sickness away.
The snow near the crater was reasonably soft, good enough to give it the ski descent a whirl, so crampons and rope were put away and we clicked in to our skis. A thousand feet of careful turns got us past the worst of it and we finally got to softening snow. We had one huge crevasse with a rolly-polly snowbridge that we couldn't easily ski across, so we roped up and belayed each other across it, then back on the skis for a long slide down to camp. Down jackets were stowed, then the windbreakers, then the wool hats. By the time we were on the last thousand feet to camp, we were back to t-shirts.
We melted a couple liters of water, packed up the overnight gear, and then slid out of camp towards the Inter glacier. Another few thousand feet of skiing and we were back in Glacier Basin...skis off, running shoes on and hiking the three miles back to the car.
I took a shot at the Fuhrer Finger route in March...conditions were beyond perfect, but I was feeling maxed out trying to keep up... so one of the climbers who wasn't feeling so hot and I skied down a couple hours short of the summit.
Since then, we've had plenty of nice weekends to play in the Cascades and Becky and I have skied a lot but conditions never seemed quite good enough for another Rainier attempt, at least when I had the free time. Its been a monkey on my back to take another shot at it.
This weekend the upcoming heat wave meant the freezing level would be above the top of Rainier, but the forecasted 50mph wind on the summit meant there probably wasn't going to be soft snow up high. Ross was game for taking a shot at it, so Saturday morning we headed on down to Rainier. We'd changed our previous climbing reservation a couple weeks back to the 29th and 30th so no problemo getting a camping permit at Camp Schurman for the night.
Saturday we put-putted our way up the trail into Glacier Basin, up the Inter Glacier, and over onto the Emmons Glacier. Spent the rest of the afternoon melting snow, re-hydrating, and resting our legs. There were maybe four parties of skiers and a dozen or so groups of climbers...the climbers would all be leaving around midnight, the skiers anywhere between 4am and 6am to catch softer snow in the afternoon up high.
Sunday morning dawned warm, calm, and clear...we loaded our packs, I took my assorted asthma meds and away we went. A slow and steady grind over the next 6 hours up a never-ending bootpack with the occasional crevasse to step over and we were nearing the top. We'd stop from time to time to let a descending party of climbers scoot by on the cattle path, and we'd grab some Gu packets and water. The wind continued to get worse and as we climbed it went from t-shirt weather, to windbreakers, hats, then winter gloves and goretex.
I really wasn't sure about skiing the snow that we were passing by...the Emmons route isn't steep at all, but the wind was keeping things quite firm. About a thousand feet below the summit we saw the first group of skiers and snowboarders descending. The lead skier was going surprisingly fast given the conditions and just below us he crashed and started sliding. We later found out that both his bindings failed...the toe pieces ripped from his skis and left his skis without runaway leahes...which explains why his boards just kept skittering downhill and dropped into a crevasse below. He came to a stop...stood up, and began putting on his crampons and getting his ice axe out. His partners were transitioning from their skis and boards to crampons as we passed by...hopefully they were able to retrieve the skis.
As we neared the top, we ran into another group of skiers we'd met at Schurman the day before...they were skiing how I like to ski...nice and in control. Ross gave them a bit of advice about swinging out onto the Winthrop as he'd done last year to avoid the steepest bit of the upper Emmons where we'd seen that fellow take a spill.
Down jackets on and a quick scamper up to the crater rim and we'd made it! I was ready to get out of there.. my lungs were not happy with the thin air, but the Diamox I'd taken earlier kept the mountain sickness away.
The snow near the crater was reasonably soft, good enough to give it the ski descent a whirl, so crampons and rope were put away and we clicked in to our skis. A thousand feet of careful turns got us past the worst of it and we finally got to softening snow. We had one huge crevasse with a rolly-polly snowbridge that we couldn't easily ski across, so we roped up and belayed each other across it, then back on the skis for a long slide down to camp. Down jackets were stowed, then the windbreakers, then the wool hats. By the time we were on the last thousand feet to camp, we were back to t-shirts.
We melted a couple liters of water, packed up the overnight gear, and then slid out of camp towards the Inter glacier. Another few thousand feet of skiing and we were back in Glacier Basin...skis off, running shoes on and hiking the three miles back to the car.
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